vintage and modern pulp fiction; noir, schlock and exploitation films; scandals, swindles and news
Above is another cover for Charles Gorham’s novel Martha Crane. It was reprinted many times. This is the 1960 Berkley Books edition, with Rudy Nappi cover art. We love this because the empty stools subtly convey that the story is about a call girl—i.e. any man can approach her but they’re all temporary and unmemorable. You can see another excellent cover here.
Above: Charles Copeland cover art for Charles Gorham’s Make Me an Offer. Originally published in 1948 as The Gilded Hearse, this Berkley edition is from 1959. The story is about an up-and-comer in NYC’s publishing industry, and whether he’ll lose his soul chasing success. Seems like we’ve read many such novels, but this one is pretty well regarded. Maybe we’ll check it out one day.
Above: a pretty cool Charles Copeland cover for Martha Crane by Charles Gorham, originally 1953, with this Berkley Books edition copyright 1957. This could have fit into our cocktail tease collection, but as with Les affriolantes, which we talked about recently, we thought this needed its own spotlight because of how unusual the art is. As for the story, it’s a look at the hard life of the titular Martha Crane, who deals with unwed motherhood, a descent into prostitution, a sociopathic pimp, and murder. It’s a book meant to shock. We have a lot of Copeland art in the site, but for a quick glimpse at just a couple of pieces, check here and here.
We have another paperback collection for you today, and this one is a no-brainer for a pulp site. There are hundreds of covers featuring women in bars, many of which we’ve already shared, such as here, here (scroll down), and here. Above and below are more, and as soon as we uploaded them we went to do exactly what the art depicts. Have a happy Friday, everyone.
Today we have a small collection of covers, plus a couple of examples of clean art without text, from Wisconsin born illustrator Owen Kampen. Besides being a prolific paperback cover artist he was a bomber pilot during World War II who was escorted by the famed Tuskeegee Airmen, was a teacher of commercial art, and was an ace model airplane hobbyist who was inducted into the Model Aviation Hall of Fame. He was also a less-than-stellar husband, at least according to his wife Irene Kampen, whose book Life without George was based on her divorce and became the source material for The Lucy Show. Well, nobody’s perfect. We have some very interesting pieces below and one more here.
Fugitive thief Ronnie Biggs, a British citizen who was a member of the gang that pulled off the Great Train Robbery, is rescued by police in Barbados after being kidnapped. Biggs had been abducted a week earlier from a bar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by members of a British security firm. Upon release he was returned to Brazil and continued to be a fugitive from British justice.
American actress Elizabeth Taylor, whose career began at age 12 when she starred in National Velvet, and who would eventually be nominated for five Academy Awards as best actress and win for Butterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, dies of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles. During her life she had been hospitalized more than 70 times.
In England, the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denies any impropriety with showgirl Christine Keeler and threatens to sue anyone repeating the allegations. The accusations involve not just infidelity, but the possibility acquaintances of Keeler might be trying to ply Profumo for nuclear secrets. In June, Profumo finally resigns from the government after confessing his sexual involvement with Keeler and admitting he lied to parliament.
World famous German daredevil and high-wire walker Karl Wallenda, founder of the acrobatic troupe The Flying Wallendas, falls to his death attempting to walk on a cable strung between the two towers of the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Wallenda is seventy-three years old at the time, but it is a 30 mph wind, rather than age, that is generally blamed for sending him from the wire.
Swedish air force colonel Stig Wennerström, who had been convicted in the 1970s of passing Swedish, U.S. and NATO secrets to the Soviet Union over the course of fifteen years, dies in an old age home at the age of ninety-nine. The Wennerström affair, as some called it, was at the time one of the biggest scandals of the Cold War.
The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.
